I put off our bedroom closets for the longest time (besides mine, lol). It’s just not a priority when renovating and I didn’t know if we wanted to do a whole system or just a rod and a shelf, a dresser, blah blah so I let myself off the hook on that decision. But it was becoming a real problem (as you’ll see below). Remember my favorite quote I stole from one of you, “Without systems there is chaos”? Last year when Pottery Barn launched their closet systems (they brought back Hold Everything which I LOVED), designed specifically for reach-ins, I reached out (!!) and asked to partner with them on both Birdie’s and our guest closet. Their systems felt simpler, yet elevated and easy to figure out, order, and install. You’ll see ? So let’s revisit where we are, what Birdie’s room looks like and you can see the horror of the “before”.
Birdie’s room is full of color, obviously, and without a dresser in here (which we could add somewhere if we were motivated) we wanted her closet to hold all her clothes. She’s 8, going on 15, and is into sequins but not into clothes yet.
The closet had two vintage doors, painted the SW color of the year (Upward!), and they were soo sweet. But the inside was empty and going nowhere fast.
It was QUITE the horror show. We had found these two metal drawer systems from Facebook Marketplace (that are still highly functional for craft supplies) and a cute dress-up rod that she was already growing out of (she does NOT like princess clothes anymore…until of course all her friends are over and they play dress up for hours). So we emptied it out…
One thing to remember – on the left, there is a secret door to Charlie’s room – something they begged for, but as many of you pointed out has proved to be just them teasing each other when their friends are over (and mostly cute). We def didn’t need it but when you are moving and displacing kids you promise weird shit to mitigate the fear of newness, so we promised them a secret door between their rooms. That’s all to say we couldn’t put the dresser on the left or it would block access to said door.
I did the measuring and found the right situation for us – four drawers on the right, two hanging rods on the left, and shelves. But they, of course, have basically every configuration you could imagine or need. So if you want a closed cabinet, shoe storage, more shelves, rods at different heights, etc, they have it. Everything just looks so pretty and custom.
It took Dave, our handy guy, 3 hours to install until we realized that having it “center”, which I had asked him to do, meant that the drawers couldn’t fully open without hitting the edge of the door (because the door can’t fully open due to the wall). So he had to come back and take it apart and move it literally 2?. That was our fault, just wanted to flag it for you.
New Closet – Fully Styled Out
Closet System | Woven Baskets | Felt Hangers | Skirt Hangers | Geen Rain Boots | Silver Boots (similar) | Gold Boots | Purple Crocs
It turned out pretty dang cute! And finally having the organization drastically reduces our morning or pre-sports battle (a basket on top for all things swim and for all things cheer – yes, she is in doing a competitive cheer team and she’s LOVING it). The top drawer is socks and underwear, then tops, bottoms, and seasonal on the bottom. I’m a HUGE fan of a dresser in a closet, and integrating it this way is just wonderful. And here’s a video of the whole makeover (just wait for the ad to play!)…
She can reach most of her dresses as we put the most special occasion ones or costumes up top. The shelves are also great for books, trinkets, and other kid stuff that is cluttering up the room. And if you are concerned about the dead space to the right know that it is filled with Squishmallows ?
A Quick Scallop Fail
Months ago I had the fun idea to put a scallop “crown molding”. It bugs me a lot that this room doesn’t have a better transition from wallpaper to drywall ceiling – we either need molding or to panel the ceiling. So I found this stick-on scalloped border on Etsy for super cheap and ordered enough to go around the ceiling. GREAT!
Not only did it take FOREVER to get just one neat and smooth (like 4-5 minutes each) but you could see the wallpaper underneath it really easily and it looked so dumb. I was relieved because y’all, this was going to take me or someone else probably 2 days, and for it to then look that janky would have been a real “joke’s on us” moment.
DIY PIVOT!
While the closet was perfectly great as-is, I was sitting on $120 worth of non-returnable stickers, staring at four flat white horizontal drawers at eye level. These drawers are obviously MUCH easier to play with than the whole ceiling perimeter. BTW these stickers come in a million colors (and a few sizes) and I was so excited to use yellow in her room as it’s the one color from the wallpaper that we haven’t really embraced yet and we both love. I thought hard (and still do) about painting the ceiling yellow (how happy!!) but waiting for inner confirmation (from myself) that it’s the right move. Meanwhile, these stickers are doing the trick here.
The pretty woven bins are from Pottery Barn and I bought the kid’s hangers from Amazon (skirt hangers and normal hangers).
The only thing missing is a place to put her imaginary crop top that she is begging to wear (I compromised and let her buy with her own money a couple of sports bras to wear to cheer – WHAT IS GOING ON???). And mostly I’m embracing the last few years of having a little girl because this one is going to be QUITE the fun tween (which I’m also super excited about – assuming she’ll want to still hang out with me). For now, she and I both love her closet and Brian (who sets out their clothes for the morning) can stop grumbling trying to find her best fleece-lined pants ?
Closet/Bedroom Resources:
Wallpaper: Schumacher
Carpet: Stark
Door Color: SW 6239 Upward
Trim Color: SW 7006 Extra White
Closet System: Pottery Barn
Scallop Sticker Trim: Etsy
Woven Baskets: Pottery Barn
*Design and Styled by Emily Henderson (me!)
**Photos by Kaitlin Green